The Kissing Hand

We're almost ready!  Holy guacamole!  Here it is - my very first post about the first day of school!  We start on Monday and have a full (half) day of school prepared and ready to go!  And I owe most of it to my blogger friends...get ready for LOTS of tags and links to other teachers' sites.  Here is our game plan in all its' glory...

**Before I get started...I found this CUTE scavenger hunt for parents and students to complete when they first come in.  If you do an Open House before you meet your students, this would be an awesome activity to provide while you talk to your families.  We have our Meet and Greet on the second day of school (that night).

Click on the picture to go to
Little Warriors
Download this for free!  Love!!

The first day will be centered completely around The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn.

We will read the book together and put together a card for our parents.  This was also a blog freebie!

Made by Donna at Peace, Love, and Learning!

Click the picture to go get this cute freebie! 

Here's what mine looks like:

If you are doing The Kissing Hand activities, go check out Little Giraffes' website.  They have a page-long list of things to do to reinforce the book!  :o)

Click on the picture to go

to Little Giraffes' website

I loved this idea - I ordered enough puzzles for all of my students.  On the first day we will get them to put a handprint on each puzzle and stick a heart sticker in the middle (I didn't think to look for these cutie-patootie stickers with the name of the book on them!  Darn!!).  I downloaded the sweet little poem from the website and printed it off.  We will put the puzzle pieces in a paper bag and send them home with the poems on the front of the bags.  LOVE!  :o)


The second day of school we are going to have a Kissing Hand scavenger hunt to get to know the "special people" around school.  This teacher has put together another AMAZING website with great ideas for the first days of school.  There is a link there to download these cute clue cards.  She lets you download them in Word so that you can customize them for your own school.

See!  I told you they're cute!

While we are on the "hunt" for Chester, the students will wear raccoon headbands made from a raccoon picture and a sentence strip.  They are on the same website as the clue cards.

CUTE!  :o)

When we come back to the classroom at the end of the hunt, we will find heart shaped cookies with the final clue (Chester goes back into the book until we read it again another day).

I am SUPER excited to share this with our kinders!  Oh, and P.S. Barnes and Nobles is hosting an online reading of The Kissing Hand read by Audrey Penn herself!  Yes, her veryownself is reading it while the illustrations fill the screen!  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!  :o)

...be at peace, and all will be well...